


Getting It Together

by blueorangecrush



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, human disaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 07:12:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13230633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueorangecrush/pseuds/blueorangecrush
Summary: Mitch's life has been a mess.  Auston might be just what he needs to fix it.





	Getting It Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CheapLemonIceLolly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheapLemonIceLolly/gifts).



> Hello hello, I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Warnings: there is implied underage sex, and sex-for-favors without money being directly involved, though nothing explicit is mentioned. Also a bit of prescription drug misuse and re-sale. Mitch is kind of a mess at first. If that's not your thing you might wish to move on.

Mitch had been trying to get it together. He really, really had. It was just - old habits die hard, you know?

—

School had never been easy for him. Not even when he was little. He was the one who got all the “needs improvement” marks for behavior, all the “not working up to true potential” comments. He tried to at least be a cute, funny class clown, to try to make people like him even though he was bad at everything he was supposed to be doing at school, and it worked. Sort of. For a while.

He got held back in third grade, and his parents decided to move him to another school so it would be less embarrassing for him, so maybe he wouldn’t get made fun of, or at least wouldn’t get made fun of as much. It wasn’t really noticeable, after all, he was small enough to look like he belonged in third grade just fine.

It became a problem again after fifth grade, where there were murmurs about “middle school readiness” and whether he was going to be okay. His parents were very adamant that he should not be held back again, and they took him for an evaluation to get extra help, and got told that he had dyslexia and ADHD and probably a few other problems.

The school librarian told him to read the Percy Jackson books. He could relate. Almost. Except for the part where he didn’t really want an Annabeth in his life. Maybe a Grover.

Because of course, he had to be gay on top of everything else. And supposedly this was when it was supposed to have Gotten Better, but it wasn’t really better for him. Kids his own age called him all the usual names. Kids a little older than him? Well. Some of them liked him, thought that he was cute and entertaining, but they kind of scared him too. Like they might expect something out of him that he didn’t think he was really ready for. Even if it wasn’t like that, when he thought about it he realized that they might be using him as a courier for stuff he really shouldn’t be carrying.

It was whatever, though, they were at least nice to him, there was only so much he was going to care given that people who weren’t his parents or people his parents paid to look after him were treating him halfway decently.

—

Trouble is, things weren’t so good at home. Right after he turned seventeen, parents somehow both lost their jobs, and while his dad found a new one pretty quick it still left them with unpaid rent and scary notes on the door.

In retrospect, trying to go from zero to drug dealer in one step was probably one of the stupidest things he’d ever done. He sold some of his Adderall, and it worked. Then he asked the wrong person to buy, got caught, and the principal said if he just…quietly dropped out of school, since he was such a bad student anyway, he would at least not get arrested for it.

So that was that. No Adderall, no school, no real job, not much to do. Mitch was a mess.

—

He wasn’t supposed to be on Grindr, he knew that. He wasn’t eighteen yet. But he made himself a profile anyway, mostly for something to do. And he wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t going to just say he was eighteen as a lie, easiest lie to catch. Nineteen would work better.

Dudes who liked young looking guys weren’t going to care too much. Weren’t going to ask too many questions. And they never did.

It wasn’t hustling, not really. If they bought him dinner and he blew them, it was less his parents had to worry about feeding him, that was all.

—

If he went back to school, his parents would have to worry about feeding him even less. Free breakfast and lunch were still a thing. And maybe he would manage to get his life together - he couldn’t live at home forever, couldn’t keep up this weird not-quite-hustling thing forever.

There were meds for ADHD that didn’t have “street value” and the doctors talked him into trying them. And they actually worked?

There were schools for kids like him, he found out. Kids who’d started high school but never really finished, who wanted to get their lives together sometime before they turned twenty-one and were no longer legally entitled to come back.

He picked a school that was sort of near where he lived but not right in his neighborhood. Someplace, again, where the other kids probably didn’t know him.

And it was okay. It was really okay. He made friends. Dylan and Connor and Mat and Tito and Josh. 

And Auston. But he was trying not to think too much about Auston. Because he liked Auston, really liked him, and that was just a recipe for messing up his life all over again. He had too much of a good thing going here. 

Especially when he heard they were going to start up an actual GSA. It helped. It helped a lot.

But unfortunately, old habits died hard. It was after the third GSA meeting that he couldn’t take it anymore, he went back onto Grindr, hoping that he would find someone who would take the nervous energy away.

—

He made a huge mistake. 

Since he was nineteen, it was actually okay for him to have an account, but he was using the same account, and it said he was twenty-one. And he matched with a guy who seemed to be interested in going out to a bar, but he convinced the guy to meet him for coffee first. So it seemed like he was going to be fine.

Right up until he ran into Mr. Z. Mr Z, the advisor of the GSA. And he wasn’t going to just - not recognize him. “Hey, Mr. Z,” he said quietly, while he went up to get his mocha.

The guy he was there to meet? Was Mr. Z’s roommate. And he flipped the fuck out, yelling about how he didn’t want to be lied to and how he didn’t date teenagers and he didn’t believe anything Mitch had said in his profile anymore.

Well, that was embarrassing. And how was he going to show his face in the GSA again?

—

Dylan dragged Mitch back. “Seriously, dude, it’s going to be okay. They don’t let anyone teach here who isn’t used to kids like us fucking up sometimes. We’re a whole school of fuck-ups, remember?”

It was comforting. But it was not really true. Tito, at least, had gotten behind on school because he’d been asked to do an off-Broadway tour, and he’d come back to catch up. That didn’t seem like something a fuck-up would do.

Auston…had come here from some kind of weird situation he didn’t know all the details of, but it wasn’t because he’d fucked something up. Auston wasn’t the kind of guy who was a fuck-up, Mitch knew it.

Auston was. Auston was…at the GSA meeting. And Mitch wanted to run before Auston had to look too closely at his red face.

Auston was…walking over towards Mitch? Saying he was glad Mitch was there? Maybe actually trying to flirt with Mitch?

What the fuck.

—

Mitch got a text later. 

_Sorry I’m being all weird but I saw you at GSA and…I guess that means at least you won’t punch me in the face or have someone else punch me if I ask you to go out with me?_

_I wouldn’t do that, dude,_ Mitch sent back. _But I don’t know who this is._

_Fuck. Sorry. This is embarrassing. It’s Auston._

Mitch hit Call.

“I was hoping it was you!” he said, a little too fast, a little too loud, all pretense of coolness gone.

“Good. That’s - really good. This is so embarrassing!” Auston laughed.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Nope. Meet me tonight.”

“Just tell me where I’m going.”

Mitch was a twenty-minute subway ride away from kissing Auston. How was this his life? But he wasn’t going to turn it down, that’s for sure.


End file.
